Office 2019 Will Be Windows 10-Only, Microsoft Extends Support For Some Windows 10 SKUs

If you or your business was planning on upgrading to the Office 2019 productivity suite when it's released later this year, Microsoft has announced that it will be leaving out a large swath of its customer base. Office 2019 can only be installed on supported versions of the Windows 10 operating system.

According to Microsoft, Office 2019 will ship in the second half of 2018, and will include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Skype for Business. The software giant says that Office 2019 will be supported on the following operating systems:

Any supported Windows 10 SAC release

Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2018

The next LTSC release of Windows Server

Those of you running Windows 8.1 or older will have to look elsewhere or stick with your current Office release. For those of you that are currently on a supported OS, Microsoft says that it will make available preview versions of the productivity suite during the second quarter of 2018.

Microsoft says that Office 2019 will have 5 years of mainstream support, plus 2 years of extended support. Thus, extended support for Office 2019 will end on October 14th, 2025.

In other Microsoft news, the company announced that it will be extending support for three versions of Windows 10 -- 1607 (Anniversary Update), 1703 (Creators Update), and 1709 (Fall Creators Update) -- by six months. These extensions apply to the Enterprise and Education editions of the operating systems, and don't affect consumer releases.

Under Microsoft's current guidance, support for Windows 10 1607, 1703, and 1709 will end on October 9th, 2018, April 9th, 2019, and October 8th, 2019 respectively.